"I started crying," he said of the police interrogation. "And they kept saying, `You killed her, and you are going to go down for this.' "

He said at one point he didn't remember what was happening, and then he woke up in the "rubber room," a padded cell in the Lake County Jail. He said he can't recall signing a murder confession.

Rivera, who lives in Waukegan, testified for the first time Monday during a court hearing to determine whether his confession should be suppressed at his murder trial. The hearing will continue Tuesday.

He was questioned by Henry Lazzaro, one of his defense attorneys, and cross-examined by Jeffrey Pavletic, an assistant state's attorney.

Much of Rivera's testimony was in agreement with statements given by police officers who testified for the prosecution at the hearing.

He said the detectives, who were assigned to the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, had treated him well and provided him with food, soft drinks and cigarettes during questioning. He said he also agreed to the questioning, was read his Miranda rights and waived his right to have an attorney present.

Rivera was serving a three-year burglary sentence at the Hill Correctional Center near Galesburg when he was brought to Waukegan on Oct. 26 as a possible witness in the murder investigation. At the time, he was not considered a suspect in the murder, investigators say.

He became the principal suspect and later signed the confession, police said, after he admitted that he lied about being at a party the night of the murder, of burglarizing a car that night and of being near the murder scene on Hickory Street after police arrived.

Sgt. Lou Tessmann, a Waukegan detective, testified Monday that Rivera's confession was so detailed and exacting that Rivera made 15 corrections in the statement that police typed up.

At one point, Tessmann said, Rivera borrowed his ballpoint pen to demonstrate how he had repeatedly stabbed Holly and used a mop handle to damage a door in the apartment where Holly was baby-sitting.

Tessmann said Rivera stated that he wanted to make it look like Holly was killed during a burglary.

For his part, Rivera told the judge he took his first lie detector test in Chicago on Oct. 27.

"He (the examiner) said that there was nothing wrong with the test, that I had passed," Rivera told the judge.

The next day, Rivera continued, he showed police the house in Waukegan where he said he had attended a party the night that Holly was killed. He admitted on the witness stand, however, that there wasn't a party there that night.

Rivera said detectives also drove him down Hickory Street and pointed out the house where Holly was raped, strangled and stabbed. "I said I have never been there," Rivera testified.

The second lie detector test was given by the same examiner in Chicago on Oct. 29.

When it was over, Rivera said, the examiner "came back and said there was something wrong, that the polygraph said I was not telling the truth. . . .

"The polygraph man (Michael Masokas of John Reid and Associates) said, `I think you did it.' I said how the (expletive) can you say that? I said I ain't going to say (expletive) to you. I want to see me lawyer."

Rivera said the interrogation became more heated and that there was shouting and screaming.

"They kept saying that I killed someone that I didn't kill," he testified.